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A Conversation With A Groundhog

Let me speak in understatements and explain to you the life of a groundhog. A groundhog’s life is harder than eating two hundred trees in one hour. It is more strenuous than running around Earth two hundred times in one hour. It requires greater strength than putting the moon into a milk bottle. It is like the life of a gopher but two hundred times harder. It is more trying than putting Mars inside Earth twice in one hour.

My happiest memory from growing up is when an eagle dropped from an overcast sky and snatched up three of my siblings, its knife-like talons shearing off legs and paws and an ear and leaving them behind in a great gust of rancid eagle scent.

My favorite dinner is a stick. Once while I was eating a stick I was shot in the face with a BB.

My mate fell through the ice in the lake last winter and was under water for several minutes. When I dragged her out she was still alive but she lost her sense of hearing. In the summer she was surprised by a farmer’s thresher, its knife-like talons flinging her everywhere in the evening air. I did not need to tell our cubs because they had died the previous year in a mudslide. Still, I went to the hill where they were lost and gazed into the weeds wondering what I would have told them if they were still here.

I found a child’s backpack. It is torn and has blood on it, but the blood is long dry and I sleep inside the big pocket.

I am most afraid of dogs.

It is noontime, it is

It is noontime, it is evening, it is late at night. Always there is one question: What is We Are Scientists doing in Los Angeles all this time, playing no shows, answering no phone calls, issuing no bold pronouncements to the media?

And always one question: WHAT ARE THEY RUNNING FROM?
We daren’t speak the video’s awful secret.
The Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt single is parachuted in to UK radio today. The video rests latched to the single’s utility belt, at the ready should Britain’s music television require it as proof.

Dear membership – We have

Dear membership –
We have been negligent in our updating duties, it is true. Excuses? Yes, we’ve got a few, and they are rich – tales of intrigue so scandalous and soaked with alcohol that to relate them here would be to betray the very innocence of our readership. Please trust us when we say, though, that there is good reason for the lapse in reportage, and that, were you in our shoes, you’d have failed to update, too, as you’d be dead.
But the point is that now, today, we’re way behind on our updates, and so we’re going to have to condense the events of the past two months or so, which is a real shame, as they’ve been packed. Let’s roll up our sleeves, though, and get to work:
The UK.
It was unreal, folks. None of us had ever been before, and so we essentially stumbled about, gaping like lunatics at that which we did not understand, including this sign, which warned us not to do something, or else warned us not to do nothing. We can’t be sure:

Sadly, such legal ambiguity was no stranger to us over there. An example: several Brits advised us that the consumption of alcohol on public property was not only legal in the UK, but was practically encouraged, which was good news for us, as it meant no longer having to carry our spirits in soda cans or zip-lock bags while on city streets. We were later informed that this was a damned lie, and that we could be fined or imprisoned in the famously Thai-grade prisons there. Already used to the privilege, though, we continued to indulge.

One thing we did learn about the UK that came as a delightful surprise was that, contrary to rumor, their food is not at all awful. Even their pizza is a cut above New York’s celebrated slices, frequently featuring such pie-friendly toppings as motherfucking kernels of corn, for christ’s sake. Here, Michael does himself in by actually eating some British pizza:

Luckily, we had our extraordinary tour manager, Natalie, around to show us the ropes.

More competent than We Are Scientists’ members put together and then multiplied by 40, Natalie essentially kept us alive over there, and we vow to never tour with any other in the UK. She routinely carried our equipment when we feigned weakness, and occasionally carried Michael when the evil drink overcame him. She protected us on the dangerous streets of Glasgow, which are rumored to be veritable battlegrounds, but which seemed perfectly safe to us, especially compared to the clubs in that town, where Keith fell victim to a conspiracy perpetrated by Natalie and Chris, wherein they contrived to put a vibrating cock ring into his beverage, which beverage he, in his usual stupor, continued to happily consume, blissfully unaware that every lady and gentleman and constable with whom he conversed was being treated to an unobstructed view of his idiocy.

But and also we played some shows over there, and were amazed by the friendliness of the British people, who were warm and accommodating and refused to snicker at the weakness of American electronics after Keith’s amp had the everloving shit blown out of it by their insanely powerful voltage. My god, they know how to run electricity over there – it runs as mightily as the river Thames, and it will wreak havoc on a shitty little Fender amp like Keith’s [Keith – Hey!]. Luckily, the bands we played with were absolute dolls, and were universally willing to loan us their more hearty amplifiers.
No British band, however, lodged itself as firmly into our hearts as our beloved Editors:

My god, folks. We will never complain about our current employment, as it beats our day jobs and yours, too, but the level of our good fortune only truly became apparent to us when we realized that we were going to get to see Editors for nine straight nights. We knew that the current British rock scene was a force to be reckoned with, but we had no idea that they were keeping their best band to themselves. We’ll say it again – Editors are the greatest band in England. Our European booking agent, the gifted and profoundly lovable Steve Zapp, is constantly reminding us that we must network with as many bands as possible, an assertion to which we respond by forbidding him to ever couple us with a band other than Editors. They played nine hit songs every night, and we stood, rapt, in the front row for every one of them. They fed us British obscenities and introduced us to the finest of all beverages, the precious Lambrini. They taught us to love.

Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors, Editors.
There. That should about do it.
Coming soon: some reports about all the crazy shit that’s been going down in Los Angeles.